The word? What word? I immediately assumed it was a bad word, but how many truly bad words start with R?

Again, I hear you thinking. Came up blank, didn’t you. Maybe this will help: You may have called your little brother or sister this when you were young and wanted to insult their intelligence or to demean their behavior as foolish, as in, “You’re such an R-word.”

Rockhead? Ratbrain?

Try “retard.” (I use it this one time for clarity.)

Ah, lightbulb.

Special Olympics began “Spread the Word to End the Word” last year. Its goal was to get 100,000 people to pledge to “support the elimination of the derogatory use of the R-word from everyday speech and promote the acceptance and inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities.”

As Martha Stewart would say, it's a good thing. Sticks and stones are supposedly the only things that break bones. But that’s not even close to true. Words hurt just as surely. So ban the R-word, and ban it good. And while we’re at it, there are a few others that deserve the deep six.

The N-word, for instance. I don’t think anyone – white or black, John Mayer or rap star - should use that word. Kill it. Bury it, once and forever. The world will be a better place.

I feel the same about “gay.” Teenagers, I’ve noticed, use “gay” as a catch-all for something they disapprove of, as in “That’s so gay.”

I haven’t yet heard gay people object – maybe they are and I’m just not aware - but I wouldn’t blame them a bit if they did. Who wants to have a word for their sexual orientation become synonymous with things that are bad, dumb or wrong?

I’m sorely tempted to add “liberal” to the list. I happen to be a liberal and I’m frankly tired of talk radio loons and Tea Party types using it as a code for “witless buffoons whose wild-eyed political beliefs are ruining the country.”

Maybe if we take away the easy label, they have to think, engage and debate for a change. Or, better, maybe they’d come to think of us as fellow Americans with whom they have a modest political difference.

A guy can dream.

There’s more than a bit of truth, though, to the notion that if you destroy the label, you destroy the stereotype, and when you destroy the stereotype you are forced to consider the human being beneath it.

I know some reading this may be rolling their eyes right about now. Like me, they grew up in a less sensitive era when hurtful slurs, including the R-word, were commonplace, so they may see little harm in harmless names.

Then again, I doubt they were ever the subject or target of such names.